Comic Book Events/Crossovers to read/avoid

@Forbin you must be talking about the recent Spider-Man/Daredevil two-parter. Yeah it continues in Daredevil #8 which is written by Mark Waid, who wrote part one in Amazing. I'd recommend getting it. Daredevil has been awesome, and you don't need to read the previous issues to understand the conclusion of the two-partner.

Hasn't been mentioned, I honestly forgot about it. Yeah it's pretty good, and worth checking out. Including some of the tie-ins, especially the Spidey-tie in which was emotional, or the aftermath of it was for Peter. Also I believe the end of House of M is significant for many reasons but I believe it is the first time Logan remembers everything from his past, including his real name.

All I know is every time I pick up a Marvel comic now, there's some event title over the comic's title, and I neither know nor care WTF is going on. Except to the extent that suddenly Spidey or the Avengers are involved in something I neither know nor care about, and I'm very confused and annoyed for a couple of issues.

Being a (serious) latecomer to the comic market I must admit my general loathing of these multiple book crossovers.

In hindsight, perhaps, with the trade on the shelf one can enjoy the story in its entirety (Knightfall being the only one that I have gone out of my way to read), yet I face the impending annoyance of the current Nu52 Batman (Snyder) story branching out and coalescing in the near future. Now, I want to read Snyder's story. I enjoyed his last 10 issue run on Detective Comics before the Nu52, and I want to read his further take on Batman. I'm sorry, but I'm generally (and in some cases WHOLLY) uninterested in the remainder of the Bat-Franchise that makes up the 52, so I'm annoyed that I might miss series story beats when they start continuing the Owl-myth in, say, Batwoman. Now, I can hope that the "missing parts" will be simple "add ons" that can be missed, but given the way the Nu52 are being constructed I fear this is unlikely.

Now, ironically, I am highly interested in where the Animal Man/Swamp Thing cross-over is going, yet this appears to have ben planned from day one between Nu52/Snyder/Lemire, and I appear to have been fortunate that I enjoyed the authors' work prior to the Nu52 to buy them regardless.

I guess this is why I have enjoyed the self contained books (either independant or from the Max/Icon/Vertigo prints) from authors with a singular vision, rather than the regular DC/Marvel stuff.

The thing that makes the pair of Marvel/DC universes so daunting and so unappealing is the years of history, written, re-written, over-written, ignored and timestamped. I simply balk at the notion of having to read 300 issues of 10 separate books just to get up to speed and would much rather dive into a more user-friendly comic landscape.

It's the reason I decided to pick up a few of the Nu52's. A new set of continuity that I won't got TOO lost in. Thus far the books I have chosen have been easy to dive into, no prior knowledge required. And then of course you have Grant Morrison writing Superman again... and for all the #1's calling of "A new fresh Superman", I can see the ever-dense and mytho-bound storytelling coming to the fore again, just like it did with All-Star Superman, which completely lost me in its clear reverance of, and lust to, inject as much of the Super-obscure into the story that it all flew over my head.

Oh well... Animal Man, Batman, Swamp Thing and Wonder Woman have so far been quite pleasurable reads... we shall see where it all goes.

Wow, thanks for all of the advice guys. Just make things easier for me, here is a list of the specific stuff I'm interested in.
Marvel:
Avengers Disassembled
Civil War
Secret Invasion
House of M
Utopia
Annihilation
Dark Reign
Seige
Thanos Imperative
Spider-Island
Planet Hulk
World War Hulk
Dark Phoenix Saga
Days of Future Past
Messiah Complex
Endangered Species
Second Coming
Schism
Regenesis
Death of Captain America

DC:
new krypton
Bruce Wayne Murderer/Fugitive
War Games
No Man's Land
Batman RIP
Batman Inc.
Infinte Crisis
Final Crisis
Blackest Night/Brightest Day
Sinestro Corps War
War of the Green Lanterns
I'm pretty sure there are others, but those are the only ones I can think of right now.
Obviously I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to read all of these, but they are the ones that caught my attention while skimming through Comixology.

"Dark Reign" and "Regenesis" aren't "events" per se, but rather just the banner that some books ran/are running during certain time periods. Just like "The Heroic Age" and "Shattered Heroes". There is no real other connection between the books other than the banners.

Annihilation gets my vote. Keith Giffen did an awesome job (with some help from people like Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning, Simon Furman, etc.) of fleshing out the Marvel cosmic universe. I think it benefited from the fact that instead of "major" characters with their own titles, the characters in Annihilation were "free" for the event and no one had to worry about crossing over with other titles. The minis that precede the actual Annihilation mini-series do a great job of introducing the main characters and fleshing them out.

If you like it, I'd recommend the Nova series that spun out of it, Annihilation: Conquest, the Guardians of the Galaxy title that spun out of that, War of Kings, Realm of Kings, The Thanos Imperative, and the two Annihilators minis.

like Flashpoint, it's an utterly pointless what-if story that's only important for the ending continuity reboot event. at least the art was pretty

Click to expand...

Flashpoint, I didn't find pointless at all. Aside from the continuity re-imagining, it resolved the issues Barry was going through since the beginning of Flash: Rebirth, it gave some interesting closure to Batman regarding his father, and it featured the death of Professor Zoom (who had been built up as a major foe in the preceding two years).

That said, compared to previous summer crossovers, this one was much more contained to its title character and not nearly as universe-wide.

I am just finishing up reading this in trade form. I recommend the following trades to really get the whole story.

The Coming of Atlas
Brainiac
New Krypton (1-4)
Codename: Patriot
Supergirl: Who Is Superwoman?
Supergirl: Death and the Family
Mon-El
Mon-El: Man of Valor
Nightwing and Flamebird (1-2)
Last Stand of New Krypton (1-2)
War of the Supermen

If you want some more preludes to the arc, I recommend these as well. They are not really necessary to understand the New Krypton storyline, but they foreshadow some of the themes and/or introduce/reintroduce some major characters:

Up, Up, and Away
Last Son
Escape from Bizarro World
Superman and the Legion of Superheroes